Another friend suggested that Horowitz had made me “testy” so that I came off like a punch-drunk fighter who’d had enough; yet another pointed out, in bewilderment, that Horowitz had gotten 3300 words in the debate and I’d gotten a mere 860. “What’s up, Michael?” he asked. “You’re not normally so . . . taciturn. Have you finally gotten tired of dealing with D. Ho. at last?”

D. Ho.! Dang, I wish I’d thought of that one. But what was this nonsense about “860 words”? That didn’t sound right. I took part in an email exchange with one of David’s personal assistants, Jamie Glazov, over the past couple of weeks, with the understanding that it would be published in FrontPage. Like my earlier exchange with FrontPage in 2003, this one was long and full of back-and-forths, and my part of it certainly went well over 860 words.

But when I went to the FrontPage site to check out the “debate,” I found that almost all my replies to David had been cut from the “conversation,” and that Glazov and Horowitz, after chopping all the stuff I’d written, slapped me upside the head for not replying to them:

FP: Prof. Berube, it was clear to you that, in this second round, you just had your final turn. We had ascertained that this would be your final opportunity to discuss each of the points that Mr. Horowitz would raise, and that Mr. Horowitz would then have a final reply. And yet, this is all you have to contibute [sic] to what was supposed to be an intellectual dialogue.

Mr. Horowitz, what is your take here on Prof. Berube’s contribution to our second and last round?

DH: This answer from Michael Berube is disappointing but not surprising. As I have already observed, the left has become so intellectually lazy from years of talking to itself (and “at” everyone else) that it has lost the ability to conduct an intellectual argument with its opponents.

Well, holy infant Jesus with a rattlesnake, folks – what a shabby little stunt. First they refuse to publish my responses, and then they chastise me for not responding to them? What is going on over there at FrontPage – are they smoking crack, or are they just giving up altogether? Did they think maybe I wouldn’t notice that fifteen paragraphs of mine had somehow disappeared from the text of the “debate”? And did they forget that I have my own website, where I can call them out on this stuff for the benefit of the savviest readers on the Internet? Or maybe they were hoping I wouldn’t keep my own copy of the exchange? I did, of course, and I’ll reproduce it below – so you all can see just how bad things have gotten with Horowitz & Co.

Now, of course, I know what you’re thinking – Michael, didn’t you see this coming? why did you expect that Horowitz and his minions would reproduce your every word? And the answer, straight from the man who brings you Mister Answer Man, is this: I had every reason to expect that they’d print my replies in full, because last time around, two years ago, that’s exactly what they did. They sent me emails, and I sent back interlineated replies. They didn’t edit that debate one little bit, and that one ran a great deal longer than this one – over 9000 words, in fact. (After all, it’s not like they have space limitations!) But this time, they simply decided to cheat, editing out almost everything I wrote back to them in the “second round,” and then, incredibly, declaring victory because I didn’t reply to them. Well, golly gee willakers, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen weaker or more incompetent “debaters” in my life.

The question isn’t why I trusted them to behave like honest people. (I’ve been suckerpunched before, but never by suckers so shameless as this.) The real question is why they had the intellectual confidence to run the full text of my replies the first time around, whereas now they’re reduced to these adolescent shenanigans. Is it because, in five consecutive clumpy posts on this humble blog, I have taken Horowitz apartstep by stepover the past two months, leaving himlooking worse than foolish? Is this last “debate,” in fact, an abject admission that Horowitz does not have the intellectual wherewithal to conduct a real argument with me?

Ehhh, as Bugs Bunny would say, could be! But whatever the reason, we now know this: Horowitz isn’t just a far-right ideologue. He’s also a sorry old fraud. Here, for the benefit of you who will delight in learning just how sorry poor old David has gotten, is the record of everything FrontPage cut from our “debate” before accusing me of intellectual laziness. (My original reply was sent, according to my sleek, stylish Eudora 6.2, on 11:14 AM on April 3. Everything that follows is from that email to Jamie Glazov. Practically everything David wrote, in this email, was published in the final “exchange”—as well as his later emendations and elaborations, which I never saw. But my contributions were, ah, “disappeared.")

DH: How does the database “blur the distinctions between the mainstream left and the far far left” or “between the far left and liberals such as Barack Obama?” The database clearly identifies five categories of leftists: “Totalitarian Radicals,” “Anti-American Radicals,” “Leftists,” “Moderate Leftists” and “Affective Leftists.” How are the distinctions blurred if they are made? I notice that Michael doesn’t single out one statement that we have made about Barack Obama in our profile of him that is either false, inappropriate or misleading. In other words, we have actually made the distinctions he claims we haven’t.

MB: The database makes “distinctions,” yes. But it insists nonetheless that everyone listed in it is part of a “network.” Now, imagine that I compile a “network” that links Olympia Snowe to Timothy McVeigh, or Bruce Willis to Augusto Pinochet. Wouldn’t sane people see something wrong with that?

DH: What Michael and I seem to actually disagree about is whether Barack Obama is a “liberal” or a “leftist.” My question to him would be how can anyone who supports racial preferences and income redistribution be regarded as a “liberal.” But whatever conclusion one draws – whether Obama is a leftist, a moderate leftist or a liberal—surely no reasonable person can maintain that we have blurred distinctions when we have actually codified them.

MB: Here, David is straightforward about what’s at stake: he wants to move the rhetorical goalposts so far right that anyone who supports affirmative action and progressive taxation is labeled a “leftist.” All well and good: that’s David’s job, and I respect him for doing it so diligently. My job, then, is to push right back on those goalposts, and to insist that David’s “Network” is the work of a far-right ideologue. More than this, it’s the work of a far-right ideologue who desperately needs to disavow the intimate ideological connections between the Islamist far right and the American far right.

DH: Michael’s comment about Barbra Streisand and Zarqawi is unintelligible. To say that two people share some views – in this case opposition to American policy in Iraq – is not the same as saying that any critic of policy is an ally of Zarqawi.

MB: No, it is David’s comment about Barbra Streisand and Zarqawi that is unintelligible. (The comment was this: “It should be obvious that even the otherwise innocent Barbra Streisand shares negative views of the Bush Administration and its mission of liberating Iraq with anti-American jihadists like the aforementioned [Abu Musab] Zarqawi, even though we are sure that she deplores some of his methods.”) David’s remark clearly implies that if one opposes the war in Iraq, one necessarily endorses “some views” espoused by people who have no conceivable contact with any progressive/left American project whatsoever—like Zarqawi. On the contrary, part of our criticism of the war in Iraq is that the Bush Administration bungled an opportunity to launch a strike against Zarqawi because it was so obsessed with Saddam Hussein.

DH: As I have explained before (Why We Are In Iraq) not all criticism is the same. Calling Bush Hitler is one kind of criticism, calling him mistaken is quite another.

MB: Calling Bush Hitler is foolish.

DH: And there are many gradations in between. My comment was made to answer the specific question: why are these two people, Zarqawi and Streisand, in the same database? It is a question the left really has to answer rather than me. How can people who claim to be for women’s rights, gay rights, equality and freedom have taken sides in the war with the terrorists in Iraq and come down on the anti-American end? I have answered this question in a book, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, that not a single leftist has commented on.

MB: OK, then, consider this a comment. I’ve read that book, and I endorse women’s rights, gay rights, and egalitarian social justice in the following terms: I believe that all humans born have equal entitlement to shelter, sustenance, health care, education, political participation and representation, reciprocal recognition, and respect. So-called “leftists” who make exceptions to this principle when it comes to Cuba and Cambodia are not my allies. But right-wing ideologues who invoke this principle only in order to take cheap potshots at leftists are not even serious interlocutors. David, let me know when you’re willing to endorse my conception of the left. In the meantime, I think the right has to explain why it’s apologized for terror (in Oklahoma City) and torture (in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib) and virulent racism (in South Africa).

DH: I have argued that the left today is largely defined by its oppositions, first to the United States and then to Israel. I have even posted a lengthy analysis of the left’s history from 1945 to the present that was written by an academic leftist for the socialist magazine Dissent that comes to exactly the same conclusions. I would welcome in these pages a leftist response to these conclusions. So far I have not seen any.

The reason why the left’s behavior after 9/11 suggests that a watershed has been passed in the development of the left itself can be understood by referring to the left’s anti-war effort over America’s intervention in Vietnam some forty years ago.

In the Vietnam War the United States was supporting a dictatorship in South Vietnam on the grounds that the dictatorship was anti-Communist. “New Leftists” who believed by and large that Communism was a flawed attempt to create societies governed by the principles of equality and justice had an argument (whether one considers it plausible or not) for opposing the United States defense of the South Vietnamese regime. Perhaps (so they reasoned) a victory for the guerrilla forces of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam would mean the emergence of a society that honored the principles of equality and justice. This an was incentive to see that America was defeated. And this indeed is the delusional vision that motivated people like Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda other anti-war activists.

MB: Millions of Americans opposed that war not because they desired an NLF victory, but because they feared—in terms that the late George Kennan would surely understand—that the US war in Vietnam would lead us to become more, rather than less, like our enemies who were fighting proxy wars around the globe. And millions of Americans opposed that war on the pragmatic ground that it was not, in fact, critical to the outcome of the Cold War. As I’ve said to you before, David, in one respect the antiwar left has been pretty clearly vindicated on the subject of Vietnam: that war was not, after all, crucial for U.S. national security or to the fate of the free world. We could have walked away in 1954 or 1964 instead of 1975, and the Berlin Wall would still have come down in 1989, the Soviet Union would still have collapsed in 1991. And there would be 58,000 more Americans – and roughly a million more Vietnamese – around to watch it happen.

It is true that some New Leftists, in the “network” you once inhabited, were NLF supporters. Had I been 10 or 20 years older at the time, I would have criticized them.

DH: But in Iraq, America set out to overthrow a dictatorship not defend one. What could saving Saddam Hussein – which was the practical goal of the anti-war left – mean but more corpses shoveled into mass graves, more human beings stuffed into plastic shredders and more terror generally for the Iraqi people. In Iraq the United States overthrew a monster regime, and liberated women and Iraq’s minorities—and the left did everything in its power to prevent this.

MB: I am glad that Saddam has been captured. I wish that it could have happened in a way that did not so dramatically compromise the United States’ standing in world affairs—and this is not a trivial matter, because the US’ standing in world affairs will set the conditions for our ability to act effectively against al-Qaeda in the future. But has this war really liberated women in Iraq? David, you’d be wise to be more circumspect about this; you might wind up being disappointed by your new Shi’ite friends. And you might do well to read more deeply in the history of Iraq since 1920.

In the meantime, I salute all the American leftists who opposed Saddam throughout the 1980s, when Reagan and Rumsfeld were making their marriages of convenience in the face of the Iranian Revolution.

DH: Some leftists actively support what they call the Iraqi “resistance,” led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Others like Barbra Streisand and Michael Berube don’t like Zarqawi or Saddam but they seem to fear George Bush even more. More importantly they have put their political bodies on the line first to obstruct America’s war of liberation and save Saddam’s oppressive regime, and then to denigrate and undermine America’s post-war effort to consolidate its victory, an effort which if successful would allow Zarqawi to emerge as the ruling power in Iraq.

MB: This is beyond nonsense. As a supporter of the US-led overthrow of the Taliban and as a liberal-progressive opponent of al-Qaeda, I opposed the war in Iraq because I believed that it would not advance our goals of marginalizing and defeating Islamist extremism. And I argued that it was foolish for Bush to ignore Zarqawi in his drive to invade Iraq.

I believe that American military and intelligence resources should have been deployed to capture bin Laden and Zarqawi. David offers apologies for the policies that have left both of them free men—and then he impugns my patriotism. You’ll forgive me if I find this hard to believe.

DH: So it’s not really I and the DiscoverTheNetwork team who have to defend our decision to include Zarqawi and Streisand in the broad networks that link disparate elements of the left. Rather it’s leftists like Michael Berube who have to explain to us why they are engaging in a political course of action which if successful would strength the global Islamic jihad and its misogynist, homophobic and reactionary agendas.

MB: No, I’ve made it quite clear, time and time again, that I oppose violent, ultrareligious patriarchy at home and abroad. Let me know when you’re willing to disavow misogynist, homophobic and reactionary forces in the US.

[Then there’s a brief exchange in which I mention David’s Salon essay in defense of Pinochet; FrontPage kept that part of the debate intact. And then they ran David’s reply in full – it runs another six paragraphs after the one below – while cutting my three-paragraph response.]

DH: Well of course I specifically did not defend Pinochet in the article he refers to; in fact I specifically criticized Pinochet. What I did that upset Michael was to point out that Pinochet left his country prosperous and democratic (he voluntarily submitted to a referendum which he lost) and contrast this to the fact that Castro is the longest surviving dictator in the world and has made his country dramatically poorer than it was when he took power. For this Michael called me a Nazi (to be precise he said he couldn’t wait for my next article defending the Third Reich). Now that’s what I call blurring distinctions Michael, and I have to say it is pretty much a staple of the arguments of the left.

MB: OK, it’s time to draw some distinctions—at last! I did not call David a Nazi—though I’ve now heard from two sources that he’s made this claim on his tours through our nation’s college campuses. But I certainly did argue that all of David’s arguments in favor of Pinochet (whom, in all fairness, he did “criticize,” in the course of arguing that Pinochet had been good for Chile) could be made a fortiori for Hitler, who certainly improved the German economy and—unlike Pinochet—was actually elected to office.

But what David refuses to acknowledge here is that I have criticized Castro again and again—not only in the 1990s, but much more recently, when, at the outset of Gulf War II, Fidel imprisoned 80 dissenters and executed three people who’d tried to hijack a ferry to the US. The contrast really couldn’t be clearer: I criticize dictators on my left, and David offers half-hearted “criticisms” of a right-wing torturer who “left his country prosperous and democratic.”

I have no problem with the disavowal of extremists to my left; I encourage David to disavow extremists on the right. Break the links between your network and Pinochet’s—and the links between your network and Gary Bauer’s or Randall Terry’s. Anytime in the next few months would be fine.

– And that’s all, folks. A pretty substantial set of edits, if you ask me. Instead, all you’ll find at FrontPage is my summary remark,

The American right needs to dissociate itself from:

– the torture and murder of random Iraqis and Afghans

– its support of South African apartheid

– its support of violent, ultrareligious homophobic patriarchs in the US

– its support of violent, ultrareligious homophobic patriarchs abroad.

Until it does, I’m going to persist in thinking that its recent endorsements of “freedom” are hollow and meaningless.

Followed by Glazov’s line, “And yet, this is all you have to contibute [sic] to what was supposed to be an intellectual dialogue” and David Horowitz’s more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger remark about how he’s disappointed but not surprised by my failure to show up.

So what do you think, dear readers? Do you think David is going to disavow any of his friends in the far-right network anytime soon? I don’t, and here’s why: though he never tires of asking me to dissociate myself from leftists with whom I have no connection in the first place, David doesn’t disavow people on the far right. On the contrary, he hires them (remember, he gave Ann Coulter a job after she was fired from the National Review back in the fall of 2001 – yes, he’s even lower on the food chain than Jonah Goldberg) and, even more important, he answers to them. Remember, the day he says one bad word about the religious right in this country, or the day he demurs in the slightest about our very own domestic right-wing terrorists and their enablers, that’s the day his sugar daddies at the Bradley and Scaife foundations cut him off and toss him out of his “center.” That’s why he wouldn’t answer my challenges; indeed, that’s why he wouldn’t do so much as print them.

I think we’re finally getting to the real reason David hates professors so much. It has nothing to do with our salaries or our working hours: he hates our freedom. Horowitz knows perfectly well that I can criticize the Cockburns and Churchills to my left and the Beinarts and Elshtains to my right any old time I choose, and that at the end of the day I’ll still have a job – whereas he has to answer to all his many masters, fetching and rolling over whenever they blow that special wingnut whistle that only far-right lackeys can hear. It’s not a very dignified way to live, and surely it takes its toll on a person’s sense of self-respect.

With respect to the issue of self-respect, here’s the giveaway: think about how often Horowitz complains that the intellectual left doesn’t take him seriously, doesn’t read his books, and so on. What’s weird about this, you’ll probably have noticed by now, is that American left intellectuals are just about the only thinkers who pay any attention to Horowitz at all. Most of the country’s serious intellectual conservatives consider him either a useful rabble-rouser or a rank embarrassment, more akin to Michael Savage than to Michael Oakeshott. And with good reason.

So let that be my final word on David Horowitz. From now on, those of you who want to refer to him on this blog should simply use the terms “far-right lackey” or “sorry old fraud.” We’ll know who you mean.

UPDATE: In other news, Billmon has it right: hitting people with pies is really stupid. And he’s right about everything else, too.

UPDATED UPDATE: In comments, Alex has a very interesting piece of news:

I sent an email to frontpage and actually got a prompt reply! Here it is, verbatim from Jamie Glazov:

“there has been a mix-up and this will all be corrected very shortly. No worries, you will see Michael’s full answer and David’s response.”

So there you have it . . . that’s quite some mix-up though, to accidentally remove key paragraphs from your opponent’s responses. Damn computers.

And as I replied to Alex in comments, that’s quite some mix-up to lose all those paragraphs from my e-mail—and then predicate the entire exchange, as FrontPage did, on the claim that “the left has become so intellectually lazy from years of talking to itself (and ‘at’ everyone else) that it has lost the ability to conduct an intellectual argument with its opponents.”

If this is a mix-up, and an honest one, then of course I will withdraw the charge of fraud, and I certainly expect them to withdraw the charge of intellectual laziness. I have to say, though, that I don’t get it. Perhaps the fact that I interlineated my response to David threw them off? But that doesn’t make any sense, for four reasons: one, I’ve interlineated responses to their questions before. I do believe it is standard practice in long e-mail communications that attempt to simulate “dialogue,” after all. Two, they sent me a 3200-word e-mail and I returned to them a 4300-word email. In other words, I added about 1100 words to the exchange, and the return e-mail was quite obviously substantially longer as a result. I’ve gone over the text many times (oy), and I don’t see how someone could think that I’d replied with only a single, snippy, off-topic paragraph. Three, I had no other feasible way to respond to the scope and breadth of David’s remarks except by interlineating. Replying at the very end of all his remarks would have made hash of the exchange (and, in fact, I thought I was doing Mr. Glazov a favor by lining up the various arguments point by point and replying to each one). Four, a full eight days had elapsed between March 25, when Glazov sent me David’s remarks, and April 3, when I sent my reply. During that time, Glazov sent me two prompts (gracious ones), and I assured him I was working on the reply but would need a few days. It doesn’t make sense that I would wait a week in the course of this exchange and then reply to David’s many charges with a single paragraph.

At the same time, it doesn’t make sense that they would pull a stunt that would allow me such a slam-dunk response, either. As I said above, they printed everything written by all parties in the 2003 forum, and whatever else one can say about FrontPage (and there is plenty!), they do not have a history of legerdemain on this order.

Posted by on 04/11 at 12:40 AM

Horowitz should change his name to Whore-owitz, aince that’s what he acts like (no offense meant to actual honest whores)

Only because they have found sympathetic ears in a couple dozen state legislatures, Donna, where far-right flat-earthers are trying to give students the right to sue professors who present, say, evolutionary theory or the history of the civil rights movement without offering an “alternative” perspective.

But yeah, after this last episode, I’m done with talking to them directly. It’s just not worth it.

Extremely well done, Michael. As soon as I read that sorry old fraud’s “debate” with you, I’m afraid it was painfully obvious that it had been severely edited. The whole “this is all you have to contibute to what was supposed to be an intellectual dialogue” part conjured in my head the image of the schoolyard bully’s taunt of “why ya hittin yourself? why ya hittin yourself?”

Excellent slarrumphing, Michael. Crush that cockroach under the heel of your jackboot.

Posted by on 04/11 at 05:37 AM

Maybe they are smoking crack over there. I don’t know how else to explain the surreal editorial from an anonymous “European Professor” that recently appeared on the site. Anonymous happens to write perfect English, and just happens to believe in everything frontpagemag.com stands for, including the Academic Bill of Rights. You can read the editorial here:

Thanks for giving a point-by-point tour of “old fraud’s rhetorical shack.” He seems to be trying to emulate the O’Reilly microphone cutoff to no effect. After all, your blog gets more visitors in a week than he gets in a year. I’m guessing he also hires people to pie him much the same way that Morton Downey scrawled a swasitka on his face in a pathetic attempt to keep the spotlight shining his way.

Hopefully, some of the state legislators that entertain this clown will get hooked by the same Shepherd’s Crook that is coming stage right to pull this joker off the stage.

Wow, those guys sound like an extremely well-financed version of reactionaries who used to declare victory when you had to leave an AOL political chat room to.. you know.. actually do something. I always told ‘em “put it on your internet resumé” before leaving to feed a dog or something.

P.S. Having bought the title “The Left” on eBay for $39.75, I want Front Page Magazine to know that it is very irresponsible for them to speculate on who is sharing my bed.

So it was you who bought that title, norbizness. I should have guessed. There I was, sitting pretty with my $39.50 bid almost all damn day, and suddenly at the last second somebody swipes it. As always. Well, use it in good health, I say.

(Are you really in bed with terrorists? Right now? Just asking.)

Posted by on 04/11 at 09:06 AM

Well done, sir. That was riveting. Throughout much of that read I kept thinking about what you point out as the ‘giveaway’ in the penultimate paragraph: DH’s enduring anguish at being ignored.

“not a single leftist has commented on [my book]”

“I would welcome in these pages a leftist response to” [my lengthy analysis in Dissent]

Etc.

The question is, why does he continue to engage you? (Notwithstanding the shamelessness of ‘disappearing’ your replies.) Is he seeking exposure, even if it means being exposed as a fraud? Yet he keeps coming back for more. I suggest he suffers from a weird strain of Stockholm Syndrome—he ‘enjoys’ this periodic pummeling the way hostages enjoy captivity. Or something. My only regret is that it’s your final word on DH, and no doubt he feels the same.

Posted by on 04/11 at 09:12 AM

D. Ho says: “why are these two people, Zarqawi and Streisand, in the same database? It is a question the left really has to answer rather than me.”

Give me a mocha frappin’ break! You come up with a sneaky and disgusting document and it is *us* who have to justify it?

Posted by on 04/11 at 09:38 AM

...the crocodile said, sadly, “Why?” and the scorpion said “Well, you knew I was a scorpion”

I know silly D. Ho and his accusations must be a constant source of consternation for you, but I have to confess that I’m a regular reader of FP. I always travel there whenever I’m in need of a good belly laugh. And, I have this vision that when they’re sitting around writing this stuff that they’re laughing, too.

I just want to thank you for taking on the sorry old fraud. I am being forced to read his diatribe (yes, at a public university, D. Ho., be proud) and your dissection of his ideas helps me to be more coherent. I am sure the others in my class appreciate the lack of frothing at the mouth to which I would otherwise be prone as I try to counter the nonsensical ravings. Naturally, I have my own studies and historical background to apply to the discussions, and the debate is definitely lively in the class. It scares me how many people agree with the old fraud, but the beauty of this place we live is that they can and I don’t have to.

When people ask why you continue to engage this sort of work, please let them know that there are many, many people who will not do the research to find out if a work bears a resemblance to reality but instead will accept its conclusions as truth. Someone has to help them see that there is more than one side to these issues, so they can make up their own minds about what to believe. The book is not good history. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be, but it fails all the requirements necessary for empircal historical study. Perhaps that’s why intellectuals don’t engage it. Just a thought.

Clearly Mr. Horowitz (aka “Sorry Old Fraud") is a textbook example of a “wrang-wrang”, which as all followers of Bokonon know is “a person who steers people away from a line of speculation by reducing that line, with the example of the wrang-wrang’s own life, to an absurdity.”

I, for one, would like to thank Mr. Horowitz for selflessly reducing his life to the level of a bad animated cartoon character, the better to scare off yet another generation of young would-be conservatives.

Busy, busy, busy…

Posted by on 04/11 at 01:24 PM

Wow, I am actually stunned that Horowitz and Dr. Jaime Glazov would cut your responses in order to make you a weaker debate opponent. I’m not being sarcastic - I’m really stunned, because I’ve never heard of any right or left website doing that in a forum like this. This is worse than that Simpsons episode where the tabloid show cut an interview with Homer to make it look like he wanted to grab the babysitter’s “sweet sweet can.”

This is proof: Horowitz is a pathetic wimp, and a liar. That’s no longer a question, it’s a fact.

Michael, I had trouble believing they’d done that to you—I kept wondering if they’d lost or never recieved the e-mail. But, they got your summary, so they had to have recieved it, didn’t they?

“America set out to overthrow a dictatorship not defend one”—Michael, what impresses me most is that you can keep your cool and argue with statements like that. They make me turn so purple I can’t respond.

Bravo, Michael. While it might at times seem futile to take arms against a sea of Horowitzian BS, I have found that it’s useful to engage him in order to point up his tactics. Of course this is a painful process, since it means having to slog through page after page of the witless ideological pornography coming out of his sleazy LA tabloid.

If D. Ho shows, this will take place this Friday (April 15) & be aired, in edited format, at some unspecified date.

But (and this gets back to DH’s tactics) I’m not at all sure he’ll show. My concern springs from a couple of no-shows that have transpired since I agreed to do the Uncommon Knowledge spot.

After I trounced Sen. Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside) in a debate at Cal State San Marcos about his efforts to implement Horowitz’s Student Bill of Restrictions (a connection which he hilariously denies despite the overwhelming evidence), the senator wanted to take me on in a more fair & balanced context.

So I agree to a FoxNews Live segment with him on March 29. (By this point I notice that my e-mails are suddenly being hacked. I am not shitting you.) Morrow then bails on me at the last minute (as he had earlier tried to bail at San Marcos, once he found out I was going to be there), and tells my Fox contact that he’ll suddenly be unavailable to do any spots until late April--i,e, after the SBOR comes up for legislation on April 20.

(The Senator’s busy schedule didn’t prevent him from writing a series of op-eds in which he regurgitated Horowitzian vomit about the horrors of American university life, including the comment that faculty increasingly run their classrooms like “ little Abu Ghraibs”. Sheesh! Can there anything sadder than a Ward Churchill wannabe?)

But I digress. I then tell my Fox contact (in as many words) “Get D. Ho.” So they contact him right away in Bowling Green, where he’s desperately trying to fill some free seats with his sad little War on the University sideshow. He then agrees to do the show in the same spot the following day, April 30.

So once again I shave and put on my suit (and again I foolishly share my killer material via e-mail), and then HE bails on me. Apparently our little friend got dragged away to an important last-minute meeting IN BOWLING GREEN that was more important than his five minutes with me and the entire nation.

My Fox contact then tries to set up a meeting for the following Friday at 7am, at which point I’ll be in Chicago doing research in the Art Institute, and preparing to give a major conference paper the next day. Trying not to be oversubtle, I e-mail her back saying that “if I had any reason to believe this thing was going to actually happen then that would be one thing, but I don’t, and I see no reason to jeopardize important research time in Chicago. Nor am I interested in any future 5-minute slots, at least not with these clowns.” Half-hour spots are another matter.

HI DAVID! Given your evident obsession with Dr. Bérubé, I know you’re reading this! You’re probably even clicking on all the links (check that last one, and the “April 20” link above). See you Friday, if you’re not dragged away to any last-minute appointments. I’m really looking forward to it!

Barack Obama voted to confirm both Alberto Gonzales and Condi Rice. And Horowitz thinks the Senator from Illinois is a “leftist?”

Oy, oy, oy....

Posted by on 04/11 at 03:10 PM

I’m beginning to see why pie-throwing may be a necessary form of communication with the wingnuts. At least they can’t wipe off the cream and pretend the pie didn’t fly. Not that I condone violence, of course…

We stand in awe of your wit, wisdom, and poise. Keep fighting the good fight.

But one quibble: Bruce Willis IS Augusto Pinochet… or is it Larry Storch?

Posted by on 04/11 at 03:58 PM

David Horowitz is objectively pro-fraud, pro-liar and pro-groupthink. Thank you for showing him to be The Complete Loser that he actually is. Any media outlet that gives that lying anti-American schmuck a microphone should be immediately investigated by the FCC for abusing the airwaves.

Posted by on 04/11 at 04:05 PM

Won’t they fix it if you send them a letter? Or are you too annoyed with them to bother?

I find it appalling that anyone would question a man’s fixation on Barbara Streisand. If you’re a guy of a certain age, maybe with a certain cosmopolitain outlook, she’ll always be the little Holly Golightly whom the camera loved through every minute of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

Wait. That was Audrey Hepburn. So, yeah. Question Horowitz and his Streisand obsession. It’s just not right.

Tryin’ to ‘debate’ the likes of David “Duke” Horowitz is about as useful as kickin’ a hog, barefoot…

Any impression you might make ain’t gonna last no time atall…

Posted by on 04/11 at 04:30 PM

Mike M.—(b), too annoyed to bother. I wasted about three hours on that email reply to DH’s arguments last Saturday night (and even sent FrontPage a lightly revised version the next morning, so it’s not as if they simply misread a single email), and then another four hours on this post over the weekend. Enough is enough.

Well done, congratulations. But consider a lawsuit, Michael. You get together with Ebert, and couple of other people on that “network,” get a couple of good lawyers, and this idiot is real trouble.

Posted by on 04/11 at 04:35 PM

Obama did not vote to confirm Gonzalez.

Posted by on 04/11 at 04:36 PM

Summers is about finished in Harvard. Send in Crazy Dave! More insipid than Crazy Larry, Brighter than George Bush, a bigger boor than John Bolton....Just the thing for Harvard.

Hooray?...Crazy Dave, the thinking man’s schlimazel, is going to the Ivy League and we’ll no longer be pestered by that ponderous pederast!!

Posted by on 04/11 at 04:44 PM

I simply refuse to DiscoverTheNetwork for myself, so others will have to correct me if I’m wrong, but my guess is that voting against Gonzalez, but for Rice is a classic indicator of Affective Leftism™.

Posted by on 04/11 at 04:47 PM

Michael, ah, a trip down memory lane.

Your experience was certainly worse than my experience on that website two years ago.

They didn’t edit my posts, they just avoided engaging me in any sort of conversation, preferring to stick to the tried-and-true right-wing method of ad hominem attacks.

How D. Ho can simultaneously divorce himself from relevance and at the same time increase his own personal face time in the media seems to contradict rhetorical physics. This leaves us with only two possibilities: 1. He does not exist. 2. He is a witch. The latter, of course, is absurd (which he would no doubt fail to print). Therefore, I challenge him to prove that he exists. So far, I have received no comment from him whatsoever. How disappointing.

Posted by on 04/11 at 05:06 PM

Horowitz knows perfectly well that I can criticize the Cockburns and Churchills to my left and the Beinarts and Elshtains to my right any old time I choose, and that at the end of the day I’ll still have a job – whereas he has to answer to all his many masters, fetching and rolling over whenever they blow that special wingnut whistle that only far-right lackeys can hear.

Thank you Michael, I was desperately in need of a LOL moment this afternoon.

Thanks for taking one for team. I’ve looked at Discover the Network a couple of times. I’ve even read Free Republic before. But I cannot maintain the kind of attention that you and several readers here have, going as far as the attempt to create dialogue. You now have empirical evidence that there is no such thing as dialogue on their end.

Sincerely, thank you for doing this.

On a semi-related topic, what’s your take on the hullabaloo at Columbia?

Posted by on 04/11 at 05:57 PM

When i read some of the things DaHo says i wonder what sort of dialog is exchanged each time he has to agree to a contract for this or that?? Buried in his phrases is the clear message he wants everyone to understand--"I, DaHO, makes all of the rules, all the definitions, all of the distinctions; all thoughts must pass through me!!”

Thank you Michael for revealing this character trait(flaw) so clearly for all of us. It must be enormously frustrating to converse even with his underlings and wannabes. The man sucks, as you suggest, at a very large teat and like the alpha male of litters, he has solidified the tit for his own, and dare not risk letting go.

Posted by on 04/11 at 06:08 PM

Horowitzless is a punch clown for debate. Lightweight, someone who exists only to encourage occam’s razor in a way that cuts up all sides of the topic.

This entire argument was in and of itself important, but his reply was Dan Quayle material. Losing one-sided arguments should be considered an art form.

Your point by point takedown of him stands on its own merit in concise factual response. He tried to flush this down the memory hole in his coverage.

Will this information go the way of Terri Shiavo’s authopsy? Your dissection is too revealing, it shows results none against this want to acknowledge.

D-Ho will continue his presentation points regardless, using strawmen and tangent personalities as some weird form of attack. His Streisand obsession and ‘x meets y’ line of argument that follows from this reeks of absurd method. Eugenics reasoning applied to politics, it makes sense only in the scribble-scrabble of self victimized martyrdom that DH’s mein kampf role embellished.

If you can answer his stupidology with direct, one and two syllable terms it would best undermine his intent. The next time he mentions Streisand you mention Michelle Malkin and Anne Coulter. ‘Outugly’ him, lord goddess knows the reich wing gave you enough intellectual ammo to do this.

The crux of this lies in the merit of University and Institution thinking. If it were not for such wonderful social structure that makes fraternital groups a necessity, that sorry excuse for a Legacy wouldn’t have a pot to piss in.

He doesn’t hate the institution, if such were the case he would hold lectures at bowling alleys and blue collar breakrooms. The stuff of ubermensch.

He is in his element, it took a decade of ethnic bashing for the Nazis to prove that Germany lost world war one because of the dirty Jews who didn’t worhsip the same god of jesus. They were right too- jews were only fit for menial tasks and not capable of true culture. Their less white skin evidenced their inferior life manifest in the cultural and religous differences they upheld as ‘tradition’.

Thankfully we brought back prayer in schools, military spending, and were able to cede swaths of land that was rightfully ours including Czechoslovokia, Prussia, Austria-Hungary.

Some of us, the true believers, hold in high regard the holy notion of ideals that god’s will is for the greatest nation to lead all others even on their soil. God instructed us to take back what is by right ours and attack the growing threat of jew sympathy, any nation the harbors jews is an enemy of our State.

Wow, change one word of any Nazi statement and you’ve got a ringer for neocon language construct.

These neoconfederates are correct, we will lead the way and anyone who opposes us is against our flag and troops. Busholini will dress the role and David Ho will sheperd the flock of believers on the way to a new millenium of god’s will!

If you drink the kool-aid do you have to actually fight in the war? Do they still give draft waivers for lecture circuit?

Must go now- Bush and Sharon in Crawford is a comedy piece. The Palestenian final solution is on the move!

Posted by on 04/11 at 06:16 PM

*fraternal* ‘speil check’ error :(

Posted by on 04/11 at 06:20 PM

Thank you professor! I would like to mention something I have been doing with friends and family lately. I have been asking them about current events and people that I read about daily in the blogosphere, and that I view on cable networks and Cspan. I do this to see how much of what is going on filters down to people who do not use the internet or have cable television.

As you would guess they can tell you who is winning American Idol or who was on the stand at OJ’s trial but not much about WMD’s or Torture.

In short no one ever heard of D. Ho, his writings, or his movement. If D. Ho writes a book and no one reads it, did it make a sound?

I guess it’s a double edge sword. This idiot is not getting his message out but we have to really on intelligent people like you to lead the charge so it stays that way.

I never went to college. I do own a successful business, but my politcal awakening has taken place over the last couple of elections. I continue to read, listen and learn so I can join the fight and not look like a total idiot in the process. I have helped to convert my conservative in-laws, a small victory.

People like you inspire me to continue the fight!

Thanks again!

Posted by on 04/11 at 06:35 PM

I have to say that I sincerely pity David Horowitz. What he craves, what he wants more than anything is appreciation and respect from the intellectual community. Unfortunately, no matter what side he is on, no matter what his intellectual views are, he is so pitifully needy and so willing to betray anyone on the right or the left for this kind of attention that no one respects him, much less actually likes the man. He simply cannot be trusted. Whether it was meeting CIA agents in England and offering up information for a dinner in a restaurant, his using Betty Van Patter (who didn’t trust him) by not telling her the concerns and warnings he had received about the Black Panthers and ultimately causing her death, his betrayal of the writers and editors of “Ramparts” in his spiteful grasping of power (in a place where there was no “power” to begin with, it was a magazine for Christ’s sake) to his selective, meanspirited, pathetic “memoirs” in which he is the eternal “victim” in an endless parade of sad, embarrassing anecdotes meant to demonstrate his righteousness and everyone else’s perfidy which served only to demonstrate the opposite - his ready and even enthusiastic willingness to use and betray anyone for anything. And he’s still a traitor and betrayer - witness his “with heavy heart I condemn Grover Norquist” bullshit. Just more David trying to eliminate anyone standing on top of the dunghill, he wants to be the cock that stands on the dunghill to crow. Fittingly, he will always be despised and held in contempt not only for his shallow intellect, but as a fellow human being - which he isn’t. He’s a pig in shoes.

Posted by on 04/11 at 06:37 PM

Echidne--

what pie? there is no pie! and certainly the pie that is not there, is NOT on our faces...not now, not in the past, not in the future. and anyway, it is a liberal elitist pie who hates god! plus, look over there: an Evil College Professor is hurting a Cute Republican Puppy! doesn’t that make you mad? grrrrr! arghhhh!

“I’m beginning to see why pie-throwing may be a necessary form of communication with the wingnuts. At least they can’t wipe off the cream and pretend the pie didn’t fly. Not that I condone violence, of course…” --Echidne of the snakes

(but seriously, Michael, i don’t know how you do it--i can’t deal with these people at all anymore. they are not sane. i just want to shout “toilet stick” at them, no matter what point they are trying to make. it seems to have the same effect as honoring them with actual attention & dialogue. -L.)

Posted by on 04/11 at 06:56 PM

i saw the ho speak at BG. the evening was filled with him dancing from wingnut talking point to wingnut talking point in ranting, raving fashion.

early on he offered the observation that the high cost of education today is directly related to the six hours a week professors teach and the summers off they enjoy.

throughout the evening he was interrupted by the audience, causing him to lose his train of thought and his temper on numerous occasions.

at one point, in the midst of a diatribe about the vietnam war and its opponents, an audience member asked what this had to do with academic freedom--the putative topic of his lecture. enraged that she hadn’t waited until the question & answer period, he replied “are you stupid or braindead?”

in short, he accomplished little more than making an ass of himself. is this how he always is on his barnstorm?

Posted by on 04/11 at 07:05 PM

Great job, Michael. I’m sure word has already gotten around about what D. Ho had done. It sure must feel gratifying to know you pulled the rug out from under him by posting the entire e-mail interview.

I don’t mind reading conservative writers, no matter how bonkers they are. If they have the gift of interesting language and can express themselves above a 4th grade level, I’m game. But there’s no excuse for sleezy from anyone so D Ho got what was comming to him. I’m just sorry you got hoodwinked by this guy.

I sent an email to frontpage and actually got a prompt reply! Here it is, verbatim from Jamie Glazov:

“there has been a mix-up and this will all be corrected very shortly. No
worries, you will see Michael’s full answer and David’s response.”

So there you have it...that’s quite some mix-up though, to accidentally remove key paragraphs from your opponent’s responses. Damn computers.

Posted by on 04/11 at 08:41 PM

Indeed, Alex. And that’s quite some mix-up to lose all those paragraphs from my e-mail—and then predicate the entire exchange, as FrontPage did, on the claim that “the left has become so intellectually lazy from years of talking to itself (and “at” everyone else) that it has lost the ability to conduct an intellectual argument with its opponents.”

Posted by on 04/11 at 08:51 PM

Yes, I find the “mix-up” excuse a pretty tall story. In what universe? Shameless, cowardly wankers.

Well, Michael, it must be gratifying on some level to know that Sorry Fraudster is THAT afraid of an honest debate with you.

Posted by on 04/11 at 09:05 PM

And that’s quite some mix-up to lose all those paragraphs from my e-mail—and then predicate the entire exchange, as FrontPage did, on the claim that “the left has become so intellectually lazy from years of talking to itself (and “at” everyone else) that it has lost the ability to conduct an intellectual argument with its opponents.”

Why write a reply like that when losing a bit of your email was a mix-up? That’s a question best answered by the left. You have, quite typically for the left, seized on an entirely innocent feature of my brain in seeing only that to which I can respond adequately. Why don’t you admit that this is the result of your 1960s support of Stalinist genocide in that so-called “hockey camp,” and turn over your cushy, 175K per annum, four-hour-a-week job to me right now! To ME! Pay attention to ME, ME, ME!

your friend,

Etc.

OK, Glazov, I think I’ve got the hang of this voice recognition software, and the bay rubie response is ready to go. That oughtta hold the sonsabitches. When you’re done signing my autographed photos, post this to bear obey dotcom under my name. Thanks. Be sure to edit uh edit the thing back to where it makes sen

What’s a “wingnut”?
Not sure we have them in the UK; well there is a metal nut called a wingnut...it’s like a regular nut with two protruberences that are called wings I guess. So does this character Mr D.Ho. stand around talking to inanimate metal objects? Are they bored with him too?

You are correct- I was misinformed about Obama’s vote on the Gonzales nomination.

I blame the vast right wingnut conspiracy for leading me astray…

Posted by on 04/11 at 10:30 PM

Well-done, Michael. Thanks for taking the time to provide a context and framework for this.

Since a lot of us are playing pop psychologists with Horowitz these days, I think it’s important and relevant to point out how he’s using this wave of pie-terrorism as a blatant fund-raising ploy. I just finished watching him rant on FauxNews’ Hannity & Colmes, wherein he blamed Butler University’s professors and administrators for condoning the incident. This, of course, despite the fact that Butler’s president offered a swift, public apology. And also despite the fact that the pie terrorists probably weren’t even college students, let alone members of the larger Butler academic community.

It seems that Horowitz craves this kind of attention, both to line his pockets and also to stroke his image as quasi-victim.

For those who can’t get enough of D. Ho makin’ an ass of himself, check out this article by John Gorenfeld about DiscoverTheNetwork, just posted at Salon.com.

Posted by on 04/11 at 11:37 PM

Just finished reading his delusional book and I have to say, David Horowitz is a tool.

I NEVER write in books because to my father they are all sacred objects (no dog earing or spine cracking, either), but I wrote all over this one because it was the only good use for the paper. And it made me feel better and gave me talking points in class. I applaud you again for even recognizing his sad existance. It really is a shame. He might have made a nice hardware store owner if he hadn’t gone astray....

Posted by on 04/11 at 11:45 PM

Amazing. I just finished going through the comments on the Horowitz site to see whether your response to his censorship had become known. Not yet, apparently. And what a vast wasteland of idiocy. The D Ho comments have been taken over by warring gangs who don’t even bother to read the posts. Actually, now that I think about, I can see why. It’s sad. The D Ho is so desperate for attention, so desperate for a response, and he can’t even get it on his own site.

Posted by on 04/12 at 12:05 AM

This is my fave bit of the site, an interview with the old loser himself!

“FP: Welcome Mr. Horowitz. First let me congratulate you that Unholy Alliance has, at this moment, reached to 20 on the Amazon list—out of several million books. What do you think accounts for this remarkable success?”

This question wins the prize for first class toadying

“FP: One of the greatest gifts you have given this country in its battle, internally and externally, against despotism is your knowledge of how to fight political war – as well as your own personal willingness and determination to do it. As you have shown in your work,”

Posted by on 04/12 at 12:35 AM

What’s a “wingnut”?
Not sure we have them in the UK; well there is a metal nut called a wingnut...it’s like a regular nut with two protruberences that are called wings I guess. So does this character Mr D.Ho. stand around talking to inanimate metal objects? Are they bored with him too?

We have the metal nut with wings, too. It’s a lovely little thing, handy for all sorts of chores around the house. The other kind of wingnut comes from the words “wing” as in “extreme right-wing” and “nut” as in “totally nutters”. Does that clarify?

Sonic, Sonic, Sonic. You should know by now that these Horowitz interviews never make any damn sense until you read the unexpurgated version.

FP: Welcome Mr. Horowitz. First let me congratulate you that Unholy Alliance has, at this moment, reached to 20 on the Amazon list—out of several million books. What do you think accounts for this remarkable success?

DH: Thanks for asking, FP. Off the record, I actually got the idea from Nixon special counsel Charles Colson’s 1994 confession (Newsweek, May 2, p. 24) about Efron’s 1971 book ‘The News Twisters’. Colson recounts that the president “called me into his office ... and asked me if I had read Edith Efron’s book about biased network news coverage. I had. I had also concluded that it was a book destined for obscurity. Nixon then ordered me to get it on the best-seller list. I was used to cryptic instructions, but never one quite like this. After finding the particular stores that the New York Times and others regularly checked to determine which books were selling, I enlisted the assistance of some Nixon supporters in New York. We literally bought out the stores.”

Back in the day, FP, you could really fuck the public over for only $8,000. [diabolical laughter]

FP: Boy, Mister Horowitz, times have sure changed!

DH: You’ve got that right, little buddy! We know what book the Scaife, Olin and Bradley grandkids will be getting this Christmas! [more diabolical laughter]

"FrontPage”? And all this time I thought it said “FraudPage”. Dear, dear me, maybe I need new glasses.

And David Horowitz. I really like his new nickname “D. Ho.” Short, succinct, highly descriptive and appropriate. “D. Ho.” is in de house. Or maybe “D. Ho” is somehow related to “Dr. No”. You know, just another dime-a-dozen arch-villain.

My longer version nickname: David Horror-at-wit’s-end.

So, Bush is the great liberator of Iraq, eeehhh? Yeah, right. From what I have read, all Bush has done is liberated the formerly suppressed religious Islamic zealots and Shariah terrorists. Iraq is fast becoming (at least in southern Iraq) a haven for religious extremists who terrorize women, students and Christians. Why doesn’t the right-wing noise machine report on how many Christian Iraqis have been brutally murdered, their businesses burned, their Christian churches bombed and if they survived these religious-generated horrors, eventually run entirely out of Iraq to save their lives and their family’s? Ohh. We must not smudge Bush’s intricately crafted media image...with the facts on the ground in Iraq.

My prediction. Eventually these Shariah nuts, partially backed by Iranian Hezbollah infiltrators, will go to far and try to force the Kurds in the north to bow submissively to the Shariah laws they are anxious to incorporate in their new constitution.

Sound familiar? Shariah - one nation under Allah based on someone’s interpretation of an ancient text. D. Ho. and his bunch of religious wingnuts in the U.S.—we are a Christian nation under their God which is based on their interpretation of an ancient text. Another parallel: the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan went after control of the Afghan judiciary (so they could establish Shariah). The same thing is happening in Iraq with the liberated-by-Bush Shiites trying to pack the courts with their Shariah pals. And now we have the religious wing-nuts in America attacking our own Constitutionally independent judiciary. Hey, I think I see a sinister pattern.

Hey, fellas, I think I’ll stick with the “rule of law” established in the U.S. Constitution with it’s Amendments that expand on the freedom of U.S. citizens.

Posted by on 04/12 at 02:16 AM

Michael,

I’d go with your guyt and assume that the omission of your remarks in FrontPage’s original posting was deliberate. Yeah, they don’t have a history of stooping so low, but they also don’t have a history of committing to the principles of open and honest debate. Horowitz’s typical debating tactic is to say either (a) The left is lazy and wrong (simple ad hominem), (b) You’re not discussing the issue (either a willful distortion or just plain stupid), or (c) I never said that (usually an outright lie). Just because they haven’t done this before doesn’t mean it’s surprising that they went and did it.

By the way, if you (or anyone else) hasn’t read his exchange with Graham Larkin, take a look. It’s mind boggling, especially since Larkin actually goes to the trouble of combing through Horowitz’s past writings and speeches and citing his actual words (wow, careful citation...hey, isn’t that professors do?). When Horowitz doesn’t flat out lie about not saying something, he tries to dismiss it by saying “That’s a mass mailing that someone else wrote. I just signed off on it,” as though he’s not answerable for what gets said in his name.

The sad thing is that this kook is getting audiences with legislators, who are helping to advance his agenda. I’m starting to wonder if the solution isn’t to argue with him directly (which never goes anywhere, since there’s no arguing with the man), but to actually help put his real, uncontrolled self out there in the public more. Think about it. If people start taping his public appearances and forwarding them to news agencies, legislators, and other interested parties, at some point more people will (hopefully) realize that the guy’s a crank. There’s a difference, after all, between seeing someone presented as some sort of authority on Fox News (hey, a lot of people still think you have to be smart and/or important to get on TV) and watching the same person scream at at 20-year old “Are you brain dead!?!” Just an idea.

It looks like Frontpage has posted a front page (no pun intended) correction. The correction is pretty huffy and blame-the-victim in tone, but it’s also prominent and admits that they (inadvertently, apparently) screwed up.

Posted by on 04/12 at 12:01 PM

So you trash the intellectual standards of a FPM “debate” having the wherewithal prior to know what you are getting into, yet pat yourself on the back for having responded in kind to ad hominems and shallow platitudes?

Of course a website administered such as FPM is no place for significant intellectual discourse, but you will have to forgive “D. Ho” and right-wingers in general as the institutions historically set up for this purpose--you know, academia--are currently monopolized by those who find e.g. pie-throwing a reasonable substitute for meritorious consideration of Self-Evidently And Probably Scientifically errant views.

[Much as your sychophants here.]

That is no matter, however. For you nor for I. Undoubtedly this spat will be remembered substantively in a week and not small matters like the academic freedom movement. No, they will be crushed. But remember the e-mails!

Posted by on 04/12 at 01:01 PM

In my paranoid Left-brain, the following statement from Michael scares the hell out of me. (“ I believe that all humans born have equal entitlement to shelter, sustenance, health care, education, political participation and representation, reciprocal recognition, and respect.”) I hope he was just being rhetorical or defines equal different than being the same.

Does the progressive left truly believe this? What mechanisms would need to be in place to implement this utopia?
If I were to look out through our window, it was my window but with the loss of property rights it has become a part of the collective, what changes would I observe in a neighborhood of productive people? Would self-supporting productive people be allowed to chose which neighborhood they’ll live in?

What the hell is reciprocal recognition? Recognition for what? and how can I practice this virtue? Or duty? Or right? My mind is so stuck in the self, I have a hard time comprehending how the responsibilities for food, shelter, health care, knowledge and political engagement are anyone else’s obligation but my own. I’m at least trying to see the other side.

Posted by on 04/12 at 01:02 PM

If I were to look out through our window, it was my window but with the loss of property rights it has become a part of the collective, what changes would I observe in a neighborhood of productive people? Would self-supporting productive people be allowed to chose which neighborhood they’ll live in?

Yet another anti-collectivist Libertarian screed posted on the Internet.

I’m sure he takes pains to use only that part of the net that’s not publicly funded.

The thing you have to remember about D-HO and his other cronies like Stephen Shwartz it that these people are all ex-communists and they still operate like a communist cell. Normal people, and normal conservatices, do not think and operate like this. Marxist revolutionary parties have a tendency of lumping all their political foes of various stripes into one group of “reactionary bourgeousie” or some other label and claim that while representing different political trends, they are all against the world revolution and thus “objectively pro-capitalist” or whatever. This is exactly the same method that D-Ho is using when he makes the ridiculous connection between Barabara Streisand and Zarqawi. Streisand is against the Iraq war, thus she is “objectively pro-terrorist”. Its the exact same absolutist rhetoric and mindset, just with different enemies. D-Ho never really got over his communist roots, he just changed his allegiance from the Soviet Government to the US Government. He is still performing the same basic function of slandering the enemies of “the revolution”.

Also I feel like I need to point out the hypocrisy of claiming to be upholding academic freedom while making blacklists of people based on their political beliefs and intimidating people with anonymous informants.

Keep up the good work.

Mike

Posted by on 04/12 at 02:01 PM

Mr. Piazza, for “reciprocal recognition,” see Nancy Fraser’s work. It’s basically the golden rule as applied to all manner of intersubjective exchange. But don’t worry about the collectivization of anything—I’m not in favor of taking away your window, and I promise that I will not use your toothbrush, either.

Posted by on 04/12 at 02:04 PM

Mike Piazza said: “In my paranoid Left-brain, the following statement from Michael scares the hell out of me.”

Oh please! Talk about rhetorical bullshit. You poor thing Mikey. We are so so so sorry to frighten you with such talk of equality. And you are doing such a good job of “trying to see the other side” – you deserve to treat yourself to a cookie and warm glass of milk. I just wish I could be there to tuck you in bed and reassure you that those naughty, bad liberals won’t grab you from underneath the bed and take away all your toys. How about a big hug – sniff sniff.

so, what do y’all suppose are the chances that D. Ho *hired* someone to throw that pie at him in public?

i mean c’mon, he is hardly equal to the ranks of the standard pie-to-the-face recipient, you know? and clearly, one pie-to-the-face is all it takes these days to get one a spot on the FauxNews…

you may now place your bets.

“Pie-Gate” will be uncovered! the truth will be known! i am right now checking the font of that creme and it sure looks fake to me!

-L.

Posted by on 04/12 at 04:08 PM

Look, let’s get something straight. Horowitz is a bullshit artist. (Pardon my french, but I’m channelling Harry Frankfurt, in regards his recently-published book “On Bullshit") Horowitz was a lefty bullshit artist in the 1960s, when one could make a buck as a lefty bullshit artist. And he subsequently became a righty bullshit artist when it was obvious that lefty BS artistry was dying and righty BS artistry was on the upswing. I read the story of Horowitz’s flippity-floppity conversion, but I’ll tell it to you straight. His story was nonsense.

As far as I can tell, Horowitz is and probably never been either a righty or a lefty. He’s probably always been a “Horowitzy"--concerned only for himself. But it seems that he’s always been a bullshit artist. He seduced someone to sponsor him in his current gig. I wonder who it is.

Posted by on 04/12 at 04:24 PM

Outstanding, Michael, outstanding ! I can see why they decided to ‘truncate’ your replies as it is evident Horowitz hasn’t a credible leg to stand on. He has a simplistic and simpleminded agenda, but one that has a dark underbelly that needs to be exposed again and again, as you have done here.

As a European, I find this whole concept frightening to observe (like so much else that is happening in the US at present). My elderly German neighbour escaped Hitler and tells me what she reads and sees happening in the US reminds her of what happened in the 1930s in Germany. Perhaps a little excessive, but I can see what she means at times. Horowiz is just another ‘foot soldier’ doing his bit to shore up the unsophisticated and anti-intellecual Right Wing agenda, and to try (unsuccessfully, mostly) give it some academic credibility. But once those floodgates open- there is a lot worse sewerage that will pour through, than the sort of opportunistic drivel Horowitz is anxious to make his own.

Posted by on 04/12 at 05:19 PM

"I’m sure he takes pains to use only that part of the net that’s not publicly funded.”

Just curious as to what part of the net is still publicly funded, unless one might considered the subsidization of access portals through creative tax breaks counts as public funding? Robert Zakon pointed out to me four years ago that not one aspect of the internet or world wide webs were public anymore; they have been sold to all manner of corporate enterprises.

Posted by on 04/12 at 05:48 PM

YINever try making a coherent sentence out of that attempted argument…

it was leading somewhere and then drowned in its own insignifigance.

You act like there is no freedmom of ideas. Little Rock changed that, and the arrival of diversity helped give all a voice in these matters.

Past that point you need to have facts to sustain such, and it is the primary reason right wing fringe conservatives never last in fair debate.

The closest one can come to that otherwise on pragmatic interactions in social models devoid of procedural infrastructure. It is another reason they wish to stifle the structure of learning and undermine the entire institution of education weighted with informed commentary.

You contribute to this. Custer was a tremendous supporter of eugenics, down to his final bloodcurdling curse words of ephitets. It didn’t make him right, or his point of view worthy of emotional representation in halls of learning. Still some will claim white makes right and right makes right. Just avoid any terms like “survival of the fittest” because social darwinism is a logical conclusion of evolutionary biology applied to behavioural science…

Posted by on 04/12 at 07:17 PM

I think we’re finally getting to the real reason David hates professors so much. It has nothing to do with our salaries or our working hours: he hates our freedom. Horowitz knows perfectly well that I can criticize the Cockburns and Churchills to my left and the Beinarts and Elshtains to my right any old time I choose, and that at the end of the day I’ll still have a job – whereas he has to answer to all his many masters.

I have no idea whether this is why the rabid warmongers hate you. I doubt it. They don’t want to take away your “right” to steal money (through taxes) from innocent strangers. They simply want to replace you with thieves of their own persuasion.

~He has to answer to all his many masters....

You say this like it is a bad thing. As much as his demogoguery disgusts me, he is still better than you. You just steal from your many victims (taxpayers) and pretend that you are somehow superior because you are a thief instead of a servant.

Posted by on 04/12 at 08:05 PM

BTW, you do not have a job.

Thieves are not workers.

Posted by on 04/12 at 08:09 PM

Actually, Mr. MacRae, Penn State receives only 11 percent of its budget from the state.

Of course, if you want to consider even that 11 percent “theft,” then I suggest you begin paving your own roads, inspecting your own meat, and building your own sewage systems. Because the rest of us are tired of people like you leeching off of our hard work.

Geez, I remember Glazov “moderating” a symposium on Front Page about Chomsky and wether he should be considered a historian and he went on a ridiculous Kerstein- esque jag about it. I’m not surprised he screwed you over on this

Mr. Berube, I appreciate you taking on Horowitz- even heavily edited, you still handed him his rear.

Who wants to bet D.Ho and Glazov pulled the same shit with Jensen as well?

Posted by on 04/12 at 09:07 PM

Horowitz has inspired a House resolution calling for an “investigation” of fairness of the presentation of ideas in Pennsylvania classrooms. I think that the last thing that we need is an investigation of what courses are offered in what universities, and what the content of each offered course is. This is a way to attempt to censure free speech, and not to enhance it. I would welcome hearing from people who would like to either work to stop such an “investigation,” and/or to testify if it becomes a reality.

I’ll await the reproduction of the “debate” in full transcript form before scoring. If sinister motives are the reason behind FPM’s not including all of Barube’s non-answers, or if Horowitz and company cherry-picked the non-answers they did print, it will show. If Barabe’s transcript above is the real deal, Horowitz mopped the floor with Barube either way.

I “get” the purpose of Discover The Network. It is a database of the left.

Perhaps the question Michael Barube should ask is why is Zarqawi considered a leftist?

Zarqawi is considered a leftist because he is *literally* in bed with John Kerry AND Ward Churchill. I have the photos to prove it. They’re all in bed, with each other. Right now. The three of them. It’s sick.

Actually, I think Michael did ask why Zarqawi is considered a leftist… this question is kind of, you know, implicit in the question “why is Katie Couric in a database alongside Zarqawi?”

Posted by on 04/12 at 11:21 PM

Lee:

Actually, I think Michael did ask why Zarqawi is considered a leftist… this question is kind of, you know, implicit in the question “why is Katie Couric in a database alongside Zarqawi?”

Which implies, plainly, that David Horowitz’s database of the left should not include Katie Couric? Or Zarqawi? Or both?

Who knows? It’s difficult to find an answer to Horowitz’s questions within either non-canonical version of Berube’s responses. “What about Timothy McVeigh” is a non-answering dodge.

Well, no. I sincerely don’t think I implied anything about what Horowitz’s “database of the left” ought to include. I did, however, explicitly say that you said something which could be taken as indicating that you have trouble with inference (i.e., “Perhaps the question Michael Barube [sic] should ask is why is Zarqawi considered a leftist?"). Your follow-up question is, it strikes me, a change of topic, what we composition teachers call a “non sequitur.”

But since you ask, I don’t think Zarqawi and Couric have that much in common ideologically, and, as Michael and many others have pointed out, this does rather confuse the purpose of constructing a “network.” I have nothing to add to what’s been said about that, so I’ll spare all my own masturbatory riffs.

Posted by on 04/13 at 01:45 AM

Well, no. I sincerely don’t think I implied anything about what Horowitz’s “database of the left” ought to include. I did, however, explicitly say that you said something which could be taken as indicating that you have trouble with inference (i.e., “Perhaps the question Michael Barube [sic] should ask is why is Zarqawi considered a leftist?"). Your follow-up question is, it strikes me, a change of topic, what we composition teachers call a “non sequitur.”

Not having the slight of ever being accused of being a composition teacher, I’m baffled why my direct question ("Why is Zarqawi considered a leftist") in the direct context of discussing an [alleged?] database of leftists, would be deemed a topic-changing “non sequitur.”

I would have thought, no, strike that, I still think Berube’s “what about Timothy McVeigh” was a non sequitur (among the others tossed about by Berube) to be found in the discussion.

But since you ask, I don’t think Zarqawi and Couric have that much in common ideologically, and, as Michael and many others have pointed out, this does rather confuse the purpose of constructing a “network.” I have nothing to add to what’s been said about that, so I’ll spare all my own masturbatory riffs.

So the hangup is upon the word “network?” My goodness.

If Horowitz changed the name of his database to “Assorted Nuts” would this rectify the confusion?

In review of my hastily typed comments above, I apologize for mangling the spelling of Michael Barube’s last name, and for my lack of knowing how to put the little marks over each “e” with my right-wing American keyboard.

No, the non sequitur was your response (comment 100) to my response. You quoted me ("Actually, I think Michael did ask why Zarqawi is considered a leftist… this question is kind of, you know, implicit in the question ‘why is Katie Couric in a database alongside Zarqawi?’"), ignored the way in which this responded to your comment, and proceeded to ask an entirely separate question, as though it were a response to my point.

For the record, I didn’t think the initial point in question (your comment 98) was a non sequitur, just an inattentive critique of Michael’s post.

We have a saying ‘round these parts that could have saved you some grief and may prevent some going forward:

“Don’t rassle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”

Posted by on 04/13 at 07:56 PM

The paranoid part of my left-brain was on fire following this statement from Michael (“ I believe that all humans born have equal entitlement to shelter, sustenance, health care, education, political participation and representation, reciprocal recognition, and respect.”) I hope he was just being rhetorical or defines equal different than being the same. This scares the hell out of me.

Does the progressive left truly believe this? What mechanisms would need to be in place to implement this utopia?
If in the future I were to look out through our window, (it was my window but with the loss of property rights it has become a part of the collective), what changes would I observe in a neighborhood formally inhabited by productive people? Would self-supporting, productive people be allowed to chose which neighborhood they’ll live in?

What the hell is reciprocal recognition? Recognition for what? and how can I practice this virtue? Or duty? Or right? My mind is so stuck in the self, I have a hard time comprehending how the responsibilities for food, shelter, health care, knowledge and political engagement are anyone else’s obligation but my own. I’m at least trying to see the other side.

Posted by on 04/14 at 08:08 PM

RE: #87 Buridan’s comment to....
“Mike Piazza said: “In my paranoid Left-brain, the following statement from Michael scares the hell out of me.”
Oh please! Talk about rhetorical bullshit. You poor thing Mikey. We are so so so sorry to frighten you with such talk of equality....good job of “trying to see the other side”......a cookie and warm glass of milk.....tuck you in bed ........ naughty, bad liberals....take away all your toys....a hug...”

Brutal! All you left out was inbreeding, skin color, child sexual trauma, and dialogue relevant to his assnine questions.

Posted by on 04/14 at 08:24 PM

It’s very easy for me to see how Frontline would have mistaken the last bit of your reply for its entirety. Why in the world did you think you could interpolate your replies, as if it were merely an e-mail exchange btween two people? Obviously the exchange was to be presented as a debate that a reader begins at the top and reads through to the bottom, as if it had been the transcription of a debate in real time. Your interpolations were inappropriate, since Horowitz’s text following the interpolation would have been read as if it had been made in consideration of or reply to your interpolation. You basically made a hash of the proceeding.

I arrived here via Graham Larkin’s essay in Higher Ed, willing to ditch Horowitz, but having traced a few of Larkin’s links, and now this one, I can see that I’m stuck with the lot of you or none. Ah well. Sometimes illuminating, other times merely entertaining.

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It’s very easy for 640-721 me to see how Frontline would have mistaken the last bit of your reply for its entirety. Why in the world did you think you could interpolate your replies, as if it were merely an e-mail exchange btween two people? Obviously the exchange was to be 000-152 presented as a debate that a reader begins at the top and reads through to the bottom, as if it had been the transcription of a debate in real time. Your interpolations were inappropriate, since 640-460 Horowitz’s text following the interpolation would have been read as if it had been made in consideration of or reply to your interpolation. You 642-681 basically made a hash of the proceeding.

Posted by on 01/03 at 03:22 AM

MB: OK, then, consider 642-661 this a comment. I’ve read that book, and I endorse women’s rights, gay rights, and egalitarian social justice in the following terms: I believe that all humans born have equal entitlement to 1Y0-456 shelter, sustenance, health care, education, political participation and representation, reciprocal recognition, and respect. So-called “leftists” who make exceptions to this 642-062 principle when it comes to Cuba and Cambodia are not my allies. But right-wing ideologues who invoke this principle only in order to take cheap potshots at leftists are not even serious interlocutors. David, let me know when you’re willing to endorse my conception of the 70-653 left. In the meantime, I think the right has to explain why it’s apologized for terror (in Oklahoma City) and torture (in Guantanamo and Abu 70-236 Ghraib) and virulent racism (in South Africa).

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Oh please! Talk about rhetorical bullshit. You poor thing Mikey. We are so so so sorry to frighten you with such talk of equality....good job of “trying to see the other side”......a cookie and warm glass of milk.....tuck you in bed ........ naughty, bad liberals....take away all your toys....a hug...”